Explanation:
Stunning emission nebula
IC 1396 mixes
glowing cosmic gas and dark dust clouds in the
high and far off constellation of Cepheus.
Energized by the bright central star seen here, this
star
forming region sprawls across hundreds of
light-years, spanning over three degrees on the sky while
nearly 3,000 light-years from planet Earth.
Among the intriguing
dark shapes within IC 1396, the winding
Elephant's Trunk
nebula lies just below centre.
Stars could still be forming inside the dark shapes by gravitational
collapse.
But as the denser clouds are eroded away by powerful stellar winds and
radiation, any forming stars will
ultimately be cutoff from the reservoir of star stuff.
The gorgeous colour view
is a composition of image data from
narrowband filters, mapping emission from the nebula's
atomic oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur into blue, green, and red hues.